AUSTRALIAN CHESS BRILLIANCIES: CREATIVE ATTACKING CHESS FROM DOWN UNDER

Author: Keven Casey

Kimberly Publications (2009)

96 pages

$23.00

 

Reviewed by John Donaldson

 

Keven Casey’s AUSTRALIAN CHESS BRILLIANCIES: CREATIVE ATTACKING CHESS FROM DOWN UNDER is several books in one. Part games collection and part informal attacking manual, it also includes biographical information on leading Australian players including Grandmasters Ian Rogers, Darryl Johansen, Zong Zhao and David Smerdon.

 

The well traveled Mr. Casey, who grew up in California and spent time living in Hawaii, Alaska and Washington before settling permanently in Australia in 1991, is a big fan of entertaining and instructive attacking chess. The 29 featured games range from Sztern vs. Purdy 1974 to Mijatovic vs. West 2009, and are all deeply annotated with a nice mixture of prose and concrete variations. The analysis is often based on that provided by the players for this volume. A few of the games, like Ian Rogers celebrated victory over Brazilian Grandmaster Milos at the 1992 Manila Olympiad – an effort that should have won him the first brilliancy prize until Garry Kasparov started lobbying – will be known to many but the vast majority will not.

 

AUSTRALIAN CHESS BRILLIANCIES: CREATIVE ATTACKING CHESS FROM DOWN UNDER is nicely produced with a clean two column layout, good paper and a sturdy flexi cover. The price for a signed copy is $19.95 Australian Dollars, and shipping to everywhere outside of Australia or New Zealand is $7.90 AUD, so the total is $27.85 AUD (roughly $23 US dollars) for readers in the USA, Britain, Europe etc. with Paypal the most convenient way to pay.